1) Your Guide to the Perfect Resume & Getting the Interview

2) Want to get ahead - Relationships are the key

3) Winners from our Career Test Contest

4) A new way to find jobs

1) Your Guide to the Perfect Resume & Getting the Interview

In the last few months I've heard several job seekers complain that when they send out their resume, or upload their resume to a company web site they never hear anything back.

This is very common because most HR departments have stopped sending out acknowledgements. They just don't have the staff to do it.

So what do you do if the company is not contacting you for an interview?

First, and most career coaches would agree, unless you are calling and talking to someone in the target company, just sending your resume will usually NOT get you a response.

Instead what you must do is make contact with the hiring manager, either directly or indirectly by using someone in your network who works there or knows the hiring manager. Unless you are talking to someone in the company, forget it.

You have to call them. You can't wait for them to call you.

Second, most resumes we've seen over the last several years make the same basic mistakes. They are not written well enough to get the hiring manager to invite you for an interview.

Do you think your resume is all that good? Here is a test. Go look at your resume now and see if the job title that describes what you do shows up in big bold letters just under your name and contact info. Over 90% of the resumes we see do not include the job title of the position the candidate is looking for.

For example, if the job title that describes the work you want to do is "Web Developer," then you should see the words "Web Developer" in big bold font, near the top of the page.

Otherwise, you are forcing the overworked hiring manager to read the whole resume to figure out what it is you really do. Hiring managers don't have that kind of time. They can usually spend 10 seconds or less on each resume.

Because most resumes contain so many simple mistakes as to make them virtually useless, we've written a new guide to writing the perfect resume. This new guide will explain what the hiring manager and the HR people are looking for in a resume.

It will also include resume templates, and sample resumes that have all the correct formatting, fonts, etc.

This new eBook will come out in June and can be ordered only from CareerPlanner.com.

2) Want to Get Ahead? Relationships are the Key.

Most hard working people hate to hear that relationships are usually much more important to getting ahead than how one works and what kind of results one turns in.

To many of us, it seems unfair that "relationships" could be more important than actual results, but it's often the case.

This may explain why you see someone get promoted over you, even if you have worked harder and accomplished great things.

Many managers promote people they are most comfortable with, rather than someone who they are uncomfortable with but who might achieve better results.

Why? It's human nature. People like to surround themselves with people they are comfortable with. Imagine you were throwing a party at your house. Would you invite people you liked or people you had trouble getting along with?

The boss thinks the same way. He will invite people he is most comfortable with to be on his staff.

It's a rare manager indeed who will populate his staff using the most talented and gifted people rather than the ones he is most comfortable with.

So what can you do about this?

It all boils down to personality. People prefer people who have similar personality traits and values.

So what you need to do is figure out what your boss's Personality Type is and what your Type is and then try bridge the gap by adjusting your style to be more like your boss's.

Does this sound dishonest or manipulative? What if I told you that major companies around the world have been training their key people to do this for years.

How do I know? Well, a great company I used to work for brought in such training to help people work better together. It was part of team building and leadership development. This particular company got the idea from one of the world's largest high tech companies, where they had trained their entire sales force and top management team.

So why am I telling you this?

1) In case you are the type of person who thinks that all they have to do is work hard, and turn in good results, I want you to know that someone who has a better relationship with the boss is more likely to get the promotion than you are.

2) Later this year, perhaps around July, we will begin offering an online tool that will help you figure out the Personality Types of your boss, your spouse and the people around you. Then it will give you specific advice on how to build a better relationship with them and how to make them feel more comfortable with you. So stay tuned for that...

March and April Contest Winners

Every month we give away two Career Interest Tests (CiT). There is still time to sign up to win this month. The odds are very good. Typically only a few hundred people sign up each month.

The two winners for April and two for March have been notified by a separate email.

Their initials are: KV, KB, LC, and SD.

To see if you've won, just sign back in to CareerPlanner.com. That takes you to the member's menu. Click the link for contest winners. If you've won, the Career Interest Test will be sitting there ready for you to take.

4) New Job Search Mega Tool

Back in February we partnered with a great company called "Indeed." You may have heard about them. They offer a new job search tool which you can find on our site. It pulls in job postings from across the web, including those open positions listed at hiring companies and recruiters.

I met Indeed's CEO and Founder, Paul Forster, last week at the Career Management Alliance in New Orleans. Very brilliant guy. He has degrees from both Cambridge and Oxford.

Paul explained to me why this new job search tool will show more job postings than any other tool on the internet. Basically, they include all the jobs listed at the big job boards like CareerBuilder, Monster, and HotJobs, and they look at thousands of small, specialty job boards.

But they go way beyond that. They also search the web sites of hiring companies and the web sites of recruiters.

This is a huge breakthrough for people looking for jobs. Indeed's technology aggregates nearly all the job postings on the web and you can find their job search tool at CareerPlanner.com

Our visitors have been amazed at how many jobs they find here.

The old fashioned job boards only list positions that companies have paid them to list. That type of service has become too expensive for most hiring companies. Thus the number of open jobs they show has steadily dropped.

Our new service with Indeed is much more effective than those old job boards. There is no charge to use this tool. Give it a try